"I have no idea how he made this error, whether it's intentional spinning of the facts, or, as I prefer to think, he really doesn't know. We and any number of climate scientists would be perfectly happy to brief him about what's known and what isn't known and what the uncertainties really are."

I think you are misreading this. That is scientist speak for:

"He is either a liar or an idiot, so to be nice I'll assume he is an idiot and offer to talk to him slowly using small words to see if that helps any."

Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist at Princeton University who was one of the signers of the scientists' letter, said that he and his colleagues began contemplating an official response to Pruitt soon after his statement.

"I have no idea how he made this error, whether it's intentional spinning of the facts, or, as I prefer to think, he really doesn't know," Oppenheimer said. " We and any number of climate scientists would be perfectly happy to brief him about what's known and what isn't known and what the uncertainties really are."

That's pretty cool though, they're not calling him an idiot and they're willing to dialogue with him.

Sure, but they're giving him room to change his position without losing "face".

It's a smart strategy since if you leave people no room to maneuver without embarrassment, you are essentially guaranteeing the "double-down" strategy.

Their approach doesn't back him into a corner.

There is no mystery about pruitt. He is a corrupt politician being bribed by the oil industry. Trying to brief him or insult him won't work; just pay him a bigger bribe.

wake the fuck up. they are corrupt. they are lying. you're treating them as if they are stupid. they are well funded by those trying to discredit science. you are falling into the same trap that led to gerrymandering. Call it for what it is. grow a fucking pair.

This is not the case. He was appointed by the man who says global warming is a lie yet claims that as the reason he has to build barriers around his seaside golf resorts. It is just pure, unadulterated exploitation. Moderation isn't going to be effective against it.

I just can not wrap my head around the idea the protecting the environment and our natural resources is NOT considered a CONSERVATIVE issue.

This is the problem with money in politics. No he doesn't have to be bribed to change his view. The people with the money just have to find people like him who really believe this stuff. Then they appoint them to some position or pay them a lot of money to win campaigns. And this is why there's so many crackpots like him in politics.

Their audience isn't him, though. It's the populace, and the deniers among them. He's giving those people a way out while saving face, in the hopes that they'll make better choices come the next election.

If he's ignorant he shouldn't have been put charge of the EPA. He knows what he's doing.

He was put in charge by Trump, and the same argument could be made for trump.

What's more, Trump was put in charge by the general US populace, and the same argument could be made for the general US populace.

I don't think the general US populace know what they're doing.

it's not that they really don't believe in climate change, it's that they don't care, and they don't want to change their behavior.

they want maximum profit now and the end of the world as soon as possible.

Some people are lying but plenty of people genuinely believe climate change is fake and there's no reason to think this guy is any different. You can find reasons to convince yourself of anything if you want it to be true bad enough.

I think that the ones that genuinely believe it to be fake are being misled by the ones that are lying about it being fake. The people who typically deny climate change and really don't believe in it do so out of a political affiliation or some allegiance to an authoratarian figure. They clearly lack understanding of the science behind it nor are they willing to put any serious research into the matter.

It doesnt work that wsy though. There are fortunes riding on futures in oil. Not to mention all the equipment and land owned by big oil. I dont think they will ever change course. Its been more than 20 years since it became a talking point and even more since big oil knew climate change was a very likely scenario. They have only obfuscated and denied since then.

"I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact," Pruitt said. The doubts he expressed went further than in his testimony before Congress, however, as he said of carbon dioxide, "No, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see."

Emphasis mine. What in the world is this guy thinking? How far is his head stuck in the sand?

He's not ignorant, he's doing it for the profit of oil companies. These selfish fucks don't care what happened end to the earth in the end, as long as they get rich off of these practices. They'll be long dead before the full consequences hit earth, and they know it.

i dont understand what harm can come from agreeing to change how we do things. big oil can just become big renewables. i am ok with that (them getting their money) if it means we have a stabilized climate and a planet for my daughter and grandchildren one day

I love when trumplings are like, "yeah maybe Pruitt and DeVos weren't the best choices"

literally any 3rd grade science teacher and high school principal would have been better choices

They were discussing tipping points 20 years ago and wondering then if we'd 'gone too far'.

The science is finished with the narrative of 'let's change policy and XYZ might happen',

It's now a matter of mitigating the damage that is inevitable - social and foreign policy is the means of doing this.

The only problem is climate deniers have no face. they don't give a rats azz about face. They are playing a short and long game. Short game has a couple sides to it. They figure if they can't win on something, the second best alternative is to continue to deny climate change activists a win for as long as possible. That way activists can't go on to other issues because discourse is gridlocked. Another side to the short game is they by acting the fool, climate change deniers make climate change activists look like the fool for being so ineffective in dealing with them. It enhances their standing with their base. The long game is the deniers don't really care about global warming. They know with some nipping and tucking on their portfolios they will do just fine, and who knows, in the chaos maybe make some money.

Here's hoping Pruitt steps off a cliff to prove them wrong

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot)

Thirty prominent climate scientists sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Monday, refuting his recent false statement that carbon dioxide is not a primary driver of climate change.

In addition to the letter by the climate scientists, the American Meteorological Society forwarded a letter to Pruitt that contained its official statement on climate change and carbon dioxide's role in the rapid change of the past half-century.

The scientists said Pruitt was misrepresenting how much scientists do know.

If he's ignorant he shouldn't have been put charge of the EPA. He knows what he's doing.

Just fills you full of hope doesn't it

The logarithmic decline in radiative forcing from carbon dioxide is already taken into account in literally every climate model. And multiple lines of evidence (paleoclimate proxy data, physics-based models of the earth system, and observational data) all support a warming of between 2-4.5°C for the equivalent radiative forcing of a doubling of carbon dioxide. Sometimes people point to observational studies as suggesting lower climate sensitivities, but many papers have come out showing the various ways that such studies are biased low. When you account for those various biases observational studies suggest climate sensitivities at the upper end of IPCC estimates.

the ones that are dead inside do not care about a dying world, for theirs is already dead

Actually most people in the white house right now will probaly be dead when things turn really bad

I'm no scientist. I don't expertly know anything about global warming. What I do know is this:

In Queensland, Australia where I live it has been fucking summer weather since the beginning of November last year with consistent, unending, relentless 30-35 degree days. That's four and a half months of hard core summer weather and even now, three weeks into Autumn, it's not backing off. Not even a little bit.

Shit ain't right. Shit ain't normal.

Oh and can I just add that rain is a distant memory. There were reports last year that kids up to the age of 6 in parts of Queensland had NEVER experienced rain in their lives. Wrap your heads around that.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. There were more Hillary Clinton voters than Trump voters.

You're bundling all climate deniers into one group, and that's a mistake. There are those who genuinely do think that there isn't a problem. i.e. those who see that summers are still "fine", and that winter is still "fine". These are simply the misinformed, and it's through education that you will reach them.

Then there are those who are paid shills. Those are the dangerous ones.

They're looking at the big picture, framed in gold bought from oil.

I'm going to skip to your last sentence and say yes.

Well, nice play of words, but they are not conservative in the sense of preserving for the future, they are conservative in the sense of keeping everything like it was done in the past. And this goes back all the way to the bible:

for they shall inherit the earth.

which has absolutely nothing to do with the argument.

they said the general (most/average) US population doesn't know what they are doing - because they voted for trump.

the general (most/average) US person did not vote for trump.

so your argument is pointless.. and wrong in this context.

It's hard to be calm and reasonable when half Trump's supporters voted for him to spite everyone else. They refuse to take things seriously because this is all just a game to them, seeing how far Trump will go to piss everyone off.

The other half support him because they genuinely like him. Those are the people you can be calm and reasonable with, and who you can have actual debates with.

The issue is trying to figure out which camp individual supporters fall into, since there's no way to engage the former group in a logical debate that may change their minds.

But... but... trump said he was gonna get money out of politics and drain the swamp!

Idk about him, but I would not fuck with a guy named Oppenheimer.

plenty of people genuinely believe climate change is fake and there's no reason to think this guy is any different.

There are big reasons to think this guy is different. As the head of the EPA he has access to enough scientific data that there is no excuse for "believing it's fake". As the head of the EPA you are expected to know what the fuck you are talking about. This isn't a case of "aw, maybe if we explain it slowly with small words he'll understand". This is a case of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency acting not in the best interests of the populace or the environment, but acting to line his own pockets. This is fucking shameful, the kind of shit I would expect in a 3rd world shithole. Apparently that's what we've become.

Reminds me of my favourite Churchill quote: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter"

They'll be long dead before the full consequences hit earth, and they know it.

History will tell the truth and when that time comes we should seize their assets to help pay for the damage they are doing to our home.

You can't. His reward for this will be a few board positions once he's out of public service. A one-time bribe is never going to weigh up to that.

I can't believe anyone would knowingly ignore all the evidence of climate change and want to completely ignore it, unless they are so unbelievably selfish they don't even care about their children, forget their grandchildren.

And that is before we even get to all the other environmental programs, like protecting the great lakes, that he intends to dismantle.

It boggles my mind.

It's basic physics we've known about for two centuries, the greenhouse effect is not a difficult concept to understand. If you have another mechanism that accounts for the warming that's been occurring I'd love to see it.

Make no mistake, these guys are NOT idiots. They are paid to deny science when it doesn't fit their agenda. No amount of reasoning is going to get them to change their position. We need to vote these fckers out the first chance we get.

Happy that you think everyone agrees that co2 is a greenhouse gas but ( unfortunately) you're wrong. People argue even this point. This is how fundamentally fucked up the debate is.

He's not ignorant, he's a whore.

As a physics and biology teacher, I'm gonna have to disagree with you.

See, here's my thought. Regardless of my personal beliefs on anthropogenic climate change, (which, through an effort of will, I'll leave out of this post) I think everyone agrees that co2 is a greenhouse gas, and that it's not helping the environment. So even if you conpletely disagree with anthropogenic climate change, if you oppose all the measures to cut carbon emissions, you're a selfish bitch.

Yes you're ok with it as am I. But literally millions of people with conservative fear based "reality" have been lied to and told this will cripple us economically. Their identity is tied to it and admitting wrong is not something they do because it shows weakness and that triggers the fear.

deniers

For the deniers: If a blanket is placed around the entire planet, it will become warmer. If you heat a fluid, it will boil more vigorously. CO2 is a blanket; the weather we are seeing is more vigorous.

using small words

Say it in English, Doc!

You're going to need open-heart surgery.

Spare me your medical mumbo jumbo!

We're going to cut you open and tinker with your ticker.

Could you dumb it down a shade?

Actually we'd probably be in a long-term cooling trend right now if not for human intervention.

You are ignoring the fact that ~40-45% of California votes republican. It is only because of the Electoral college that it is even possible for the largest states to (in theory) decide the entire election - because you are aware that the electoral college isn't about who wins the most states, right?

If you go by popular vote, then all of a sudden all the republican votes in California, New York etc would actually be tallied. Millions of conservatives would actually get a voice. Why do you want to keep oppressing all those voters?

Idk man, if someone can step outside and say "it's cold today, so global warming must not be real," I think they're suffering from a dangerous amount of misinformation, and probably not only about climate change.

I think there are 3 kinds of people that deny climate change.

1.Someone that believes in climate change but preaches denial for financial reasons.

2.Someone that has been misled with false or misleading data by someone they trust more than those giving the true and accurate information.

3.Someone that believes we are minute in gods grand design and would be unable to have a negative impact on gods plan by simply going about our daily live.

I'll take the 3rd grade science teacher who understands that CO2 from fossil fuels is one of the primary contributors to climate change. you'd rather have a business mind who disputes that and thinks it's okay to dump coal waste in rivers?

This is not true at all. Scientists are perhaps the most aware of anyone, that if you don't know something, it doesn't make you an idiot. Scientists know very well that communicating complex science to the general public is one of the hardest jobs we have to do.

By we do you mean the ultra rich profiting off the poor, or the poor who are suffering to profit the ultra rich?

Football games are not decided by who gained the most yards in the game. Though this statistic is widely reported with the score, it is only indicative of the game winner. The winner of the game is the team with the most points on the score board. Now if football were determined by the most yardage gained in the game, that would cause the game to be played much differently. Changing out democratic republic to a strict democracy would similarly change how presidential campaigns are conducted. I thing there were more people that didn't vote for either candidate, so does that mean no one should be president?

Quick profits over the environment. It's disgusting but it's what they're doing.

The electoral college undermines the idea that every person eligible to vote should have the same amount of influence. There are 12 swing states in America (and that's a generous amount), which essentially means that unless you live in one of those 12 swing states, your vote is absolutely meaningless. Presidential campaigns are mostly being conducted in these 12 swing states, because in reality, these are the only states that matter. The rest are just status quo. This leads to less voter turnout, as a large portion of americans are correct in believing that their vote doesn't matter. This keeps the south in a republican stranglehold and the western and northeastern coastal states in a democratic one. The worst part isn't even the electoral college. The winner-takes-all rule is the true sinner. And yeah a presidential race wouldn't be run the same way. Now the presidential candidates would have to actually meet the whole nation's demands instead of only the 12 swing states.

the biggest oil companies are massively investing in renewables though because they know that the end of oil is coming and they'll have to start competing with real alternatives soon.

Scientists are not the only audience, and politics is a game of feelings more than it's a game of logic. The target of their comments is not a scientist, but a politician who is constantly trying to appear strong.

You presented an argument. Can you back it up with details? I prefer links to each point that make the entire argument valid.

I am strongly in favour of no one being president. :-)

That's a different argument with no bearing on whether CO2 is the major driver behind the climate change we have been observing. It also has been subject to extensive study and there is little evidence it is sufficient to counteract the forcing effect of CO2.

their own wallets are at stake.

Pruitt was appointed by a president who slipped up the other day, during his press conference with Merkel, and referred to America as "a very strong company-- uh, country."

The same people who believe government regulation, the UN, and the EU are ineffective and only destroy entrepreneurship and free market economies hate the idea of climate change because the only practical solutions to it require those things. For decades now they have been demanding more science, better science, 100% uniform science...hoping to avoid doing anything about the problem. As that evidence has come in, they have shifted more to saying that climate change exists but we don't know why. Now they are beginning to say that man-made climate change exists, but we are powerless to do anything about it; or simply saying that there are more important, pressing problems to fix...like how to increase defense spending and still give out tax cuts. Because they have a religious vision and won't give it up.

You're right, they will win in the short term, because their message is more attractive. Like some guy who told people on the Titanic that everything was OK, just the deck chairs needed to be moved.

That's not logical.

To determine the proper policy, you need to understand how much damage is being caused, our ability to mitigate this damage, and whether the cost of doing so outweighs the damage of not mitigating it.

The last question is economic, rather than scientific.

Did what? Fix their shit? They began a transition that should have started decades ago and they also helped the spread of crimate change denial.

How would you express my question in a more balanced and fair way, or is the fact that I am alluding to simply offensive to you because it contradicts your false reality?

so your argument is pointless

His argument makes an incredibly valid point even if it's not right within the context of the previous comment.

Changing out democratic republic to a strict democracy would similarly change how presidential campaigns are conducted.

A republic is simply a system of government where the head of state is democratically elected. France is a republic. Germany is a republic. Finland is a republic. Examples of non-republics are Britain, Sweden and Spain because they have unelected monarchs as heads of government (they are still democracies however, because these monarchs wield no power).

A country being a republic does in no way mean that the asine, undemocratic electoral college where losers can win is inherent to republicanism. Republicanism is simply about not having an unelected king/queen as head of state.

The fact that you come with such a ridiculous statement implies that you don't even know the first thing about the subject you are lecturing some one else on.

by then the people in charge of those companies will say that you cannot punish them for the mistakes of their fathers. So, they won't ever face any retribution.

The problem is, I don't think Pruitt can understand what gravity is.

You forgot the /s

Shell just did...

That's because being in a developed country, you're more insulated from food price shocks than the rest of the world. Most scholars agree that climate change played a part in the rise of Arab Spring. While the causes were different, anyone who was in a developing country during the 2007-08 food crisis knows how quickly things can turn ugly (though climate change was at best a minor factor in that situation 10 years ago).

People like Pruitt probably believe that climate change is real, but they don't give two shits about it because their own wallets are at stake. Selfish pricks.

Oppenheimer?

"And I am become life, the saver of worlds?"

It's unconscionable. History won't be kind, but I suppose they will be dead by then, so YOLO or something.

There are hundreds of factors that affect climate.

And none of them explain the recent extremely rapid warming.

There have been periods in Earth's history with higher CO2 levels, yet lower temperatures.

These also coincide with periods of lower solar output or other factors, over the recent past all other factors have been effectively stable.

And wipe out their bloodlines, entirely.

I'm not a fan of punishing the son for sins of the father, but in the case of decimating civilization for short term gains and ideological talking points, there needs to be some kind of actual real consequence to fucking over billions of people.

You can't punish a dead man, but you can sure as hell make them expensive to emulate.

It's impossible to make a man understand something if his paycheck depends on not understanding.

We all know this isn't ignorance. It's willful deceit due to conflicts of interest.

What is the cost to completely mitigate the effects?

What temperature is ideal?

How did you calculate the damage that would be caused by a certain increase in global temperature?

These are huge decisions - we shouldn't just hand wave them.

Hey! I may be dead inside but I like this planet.

"He licks his own asshole! Is that the same tongue we want speaking for us on a national stage?"

"But he's so cute and snuggly and poochie poochie pooh!"

"I... What?"

Scientists shouldn't be proposing policy. That's what a politician does, when they get pertinent information.

Doesn't matter. If you're Christian, you are meek or gentle by default.

I like how you left out the first half of that verse.

"Renewable electric power, on average, costs less than either oil, coal, or old style nuclear power."

What? I'd be very curious to read your source on this. Yes, there are certain areas with a lot of wind or a lot of sun where this is true, but I find it hard to believe this is true in most areas. Where I live, wind is a nonstarter and solar energy won't even pay back the cost of the panels in 30 years.

What pause in warming?

This right here is the real solution.

And the golfing! Don't forget all the golfing. I've never even heard of so much golf. Make America Golf Again

heh good one! True, they just see their own little profit, hoping somebody else will fix the environment after they've extracted​ as much profit as they can.

You're absolutely correct. But at this point, with all the stupidity or mal-intent (take your pick) I still can't help wanting to yell "Fuck Pruitt!"

I'm sorry, but your "logical" response doesn't make a damn lick of sense. We understand the damage, we're pretty damn certain we know what's causing it, and we know for certain what we can do to mitigate the effects. Climate change is just a global scale negative externality.

The only reason we're in this mess is dumb and weak policy makers.

They lie. They are not misinformed. They are paid to lie. You can't use logic and facts and reason to change the mind of a person that gets money to tell a lie. It's like trying to wake up a person that pretends to sleep.

Pruitt can point to the pause in warming

He can't, since that didn't happen.

You're already at least 30 years overdue on that.

Stand in your garage with the car running and then get back to me on that.